Quality, tailor-made human capital consulting solutions

Founded by Francois Wilbers in April 1993, Work Dynamics offers professional human resource and organisational psychological services, and is deeply committed to black empowerment and transformation.

“Founded as a partnership, for the first two years, the partnership operated from my home. In the third year, Work Dynamics outgrew the ‘home office’and moved into offices at Tijgerpark,” says Francois Wilbers, Managing Director.
At the same time, Work Dynamics was transformed from a partnership into a private company and, today, has offices in Cape Town, Pretoria, Umhlanga and Port Elizabeth. Wilbers explains that, initially, Work Dynamics predominantly rendered psychological assessment services, but then ventured into other services such as remuneration, performance management and organisation development. “The latest addition to our services is training and development when Work Dynamics was accredited as a training service provider,” he says.

Work Dynamics strives to be regarded as the preferred human capital partner to their clients in their selected areas of focus and they are committed to forging long-term client relationships in Southern Africa by offering quality-driven human capital solutions to support their clients in achieving their business objectives. The company’s brand is characterised by:

• The confidence of its consultants in their ability to add value to customers through innovative solutions,
• A strong customer focus driven by the responsiveness of their consultants to effectively and efficiently attend to requests of their customers,
• Their customers benefit from the insight gained from their consultants through their continuous professional development and extensive experience, The versatility of their consultants assists them to offer integrative strategic solutions to their customers,
• The performance-driven attitude of their consultants to deliver consistently on customer commitments.

“Over the years, Work Dynamics’ client service has been the outstanding trademark and drivingforce for its success,” Wilbers adds.

Local and international associates

An area where Work Dynamics has shown incredible innovation is in their association with local and international specialists. Wilbers says that, as a start-up, Work Dynamics did not have access to “seed capital”. “The operations of the business were funded out of the professional fees that the consultants earned. Only when all the expenses were
paid, did the consultants divide what was left amongst themselves,” he explains. Against this background, the company did not have the funds to invest in research and development but it always knew what it wanted to be.
“Hence, we started to explore ways of getting access to innovative products and solutions by forging strategic partnerships with like-minded professional consultancies locally and internationally. In this process, we always ‘stuck to our knitting’. For example, in our imaginative team development interventions, we partnered with events
managers and communication specialists, whilst our consultants stayed focused on the behavioural dynamics of team behaviour,” Wilbers says. The company is extremely proud of their strategic alliance with Cubiks, an international award-winning consultancy for innovative assessment solutions. Through this association,
Wilbers says they can introduce their innovative solutions into the South African market. Furthermore, their consultants were also afforded the opportunity to receive exposure on international assignments. “The latest strategic alliance is with OCAI, a consultancy with expertise in the assessment and change of organisation culture. Through this association, we have access to one of the international experts in organisational culture management,” he adds.

Services

Assessment services

They offer assessment services for selection and development. Their assessments for selection purposes assist their clients to make informed decisions in appointing suitable staff to their respective organisations. This reduces the risk
of appointing staff who do not have the capacity to perform satisfactorily in their positions. Their assessments for development assist their clients to identify their staff’s development needs in a scientific way. It assists their clients to better target their training and developing initiatives with a better return on their investment in the development of their staff.

Organisation development service

It is as a systematic approach to improving organisational effectiveness—one that aligns strategy, people and processes to improve the overall performance of the organisation. It is a holistic focus on what is done and how it
impacts on the different parts of the organisation. These services include organisational design, organisational culture management, organisational climate surveys, team development and change management. Significant value is added if they can assist clients through their organisational development expertise to increase the performance of
their clients’ organisations.

Performance management services

Their expert knowledge and experience assist their clients to stimulate, direct and manage or control meaningful contributions from their employees, thereby focusing the efforts of many behind key organisational objectives. The collective achievement of individual goals aligned to organisational objectives naturally leads to successful organisations.

Remuneration advisory services

Their services in this regard include assistance with job evaluation, incentive scheme design, remuneration surveys and benchmarking, remuneration structuring and remuneration strategy and policy design. Rewards are more than just the basic salaries and benefits that are offered to employees. It also includes non-monetary rewards that may
account for than 50% of the total rewards that an employee may receive. This enables their clients to attract, retain and engage their staff through the implementation of effective and efficient reward practices.

A black empowerment company

Work Dynamics is a proud level 2 BBBEE contributor and actively creates direct economic participation opportunities for previously disadvantaged staff. “As a small consultancy, Work Dynamics proactively started the process of transformation into a black empowerment company in 2004 with due consideration of the social, economic and political transformation in South Africa.

“We realised that if Work Dynamics wants to achieve its vision and mission, it only made business sense to adapt to our environment,” Wilbers explains. The Empowerdex Rating Agency was appointed to review the company’s black
economic empowerment and in 2004, Work Dynamics achieved a rating as a Qualifying Small Enterprise with the status as a Level 1 contributor, AAA+ and with a 135% procurement recognition level in terms of the old BBBEE
code. “Work Dynamics was awarded a certificate of excellence by Impumelelo in recognition of its commitment to transformation for the year 2014. Impumelelo—affiliated to the Department of Trade and Industry and the Department of International Relations and Cooperation—showcases empowerment and transformation across
government and private business sectors. This directory is also endorsed by the Department of Arts and Culture and the Black Business Council. “With effect from 1 February 2016, Work Dynamics was transformed into a black-owned
company and achieved a Level 2 contributor status in terms of the new BBBEE code. Work Dynamics (Pty),” Wilbers enthuses.

The company takes pride in being ahead of the curve in terms of their commitment to empowerment initiatives and playing their part to transform South Africa’s economy, allowing for meaningful economic participation by historically disadvantaged black people. As part of their future goals, Wilbers says one of their strategic objectives is to transform the company into a Level 1 contributor within the next two years. “One of the pillars we have already achieved is social responsibility. In this regard, we delivered pro bono psychological career assessment services to previously disadvantaged schools and consulting services to NGOs at highly reduced professional fee rates,” he says.

Additionally, he says they will focus on skills development by offering internships in psychology and psychometry to previously disadvantaged individuals, as well as the skills development of all their staff. “Work Dynamics is very close to achieving its goal with regard to preferential procurement. We make use of independent practice psychologists and psychometrist. “To improve their ability to participate in assignments, Work Dynamics funds them, enabling them to acquire the required training and accreditations, and provides them with advice in developing their practices. We are also consistently trying to improve the employment equity profile of our consulting team and administrative support staff,” he explains.

Leading from the front

In order to be a good, effective leader, Wilbers believes one must lead from the front. “As a founder and leader of a business, you need to be prepared to work very hard—for me, there is no such thing as office hours. You also
need perseverance—running a business is not always as glamorous as it may seem. There are always challenges that one needs to face as a leader.

“I think the famous expression that when the going gets tough, the tough get going is very appropriate. Emotional maturity is of the utmost importance. There are always things that will go wrong. One needs to be able to ‘bounce
back’ quickly when faced with disappointment. “To lead people is not a popularity contest. Colleagues and business associates may not always agree with you but as the leader, you need the confidence in who you are, what you
believe in and what you are doing without getting carried away with yourself.

“Personally, I believe that one needs to see the humour in a situation—one should not always take oneself too seriously. I find that to laugh with colleagues and friends about a situation, even if it is at the expense of yourself, relieves the stress typically associated with leadership positions,” he concludes.